Rhaphiolepis is a genus of the Rosaceae family containing several species of evergreen shrubs that originated in China and Japan. They are considered well adapted for garden and landscape use in mild climate regions, and they are particularly well-suited to coastal areas, due to their tolerance to salt spray, drought and sandy soils.
The hybrid Rhaphiolepis taxa, R..times.delacourii, was first reported and grown in the late nineteenth century by Delacour, gardener in Cannes, France. This hybrid selection shows moderate resistance to leaf spot and cold damage, while plant characters are intermedite between the parent species, R. indica and R. umbellata. Rhaphiolepis umbellata (sometimes referred to as Rhaphiolepis japonica or Rhaphiolepis ovata), commonly known as Yeddo Hawthorn, is native to Japan and the Ryukyu islands. It is typically a rounded shrub that can reach a maxiumu height of about 12 feet (The New York Botanical Garden Illustrated Encyclopedia of Horticulture, Thomas H. Everett, Garland Publishing, Inc. 1992, pp. 2885-2886).
Rhaphiolepis umbellata is used in the landscapes as an intermediate sized shrub. It is attractive because it blooms profusely in the springtime with white to pink flowers and because dark-blue to black fruits form in the summer and persist throughout the fall and winter. Regarding its size, it is typically reported as "unpredictable," with reports ranging from the 12 feet as reported above, to "4-6 feet, spread 6 feet" (in "Landscape Plants of the Southeast," R. Gordon Halfacre and Anne R. Shawcroft, Sparks Press 1979, p. 128), to "1-4 m" (in "The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening," Anthony Huxley, Editor-in-Chief, The MacMillan Press Limited, 1992; p. 24) to "1.2 m" (in "The Hillier Manual of Trees & Shrubs, Sixth Edition," David & Charles, 1992, p. 356). Due to this documented variability in size, there has been a need to develop a new cultivar with a more compact habit for use in certain landscape settings. Additionally, there is a need to develop a landscape plant well-adapted to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Hardiness Zone 7b and which demonstrates resistance to leaf spot disease that has become a serious problem on this species.